


Rematch

by teyla



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Fix-It, Everybody Lives, Friendship, Goat Herder Bucky Barnes, Minor Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Minor Canonical Character(s), Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Thor Fixes Everything, Time Shenanigans, Tony Stark Hates Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:09:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18683851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teyla/pseuds/teyla
Summary: “I recognize that the Council has made a decision. But given that it’s a stupid-ass decision, I’ve elected to ignore it.”A.k.a. an Endgame fix-it fic. Read the author’s note for more details and spoilers.





	Rematch

**Author's Note:**

> I came out of Endgame mad about a bunch of things: the nonsensical time travel, the unnecessary deaths, the way they treated Thor, and the fact that they took what could’ve been a really fun movie and turned it into a really sad and unsatisfying movie because they couldn’t fathom how to resolve character arcs without fabricating tragedy. (Cesperanza made a good post about what exactly was so annoying about how the movie ended, and she did it without even having seen it. [Linking here to the reblog on my Tumblr](https://t-eyla.tumblr.com/post/184488233503) because I bolded the bits I thought were most poignant.)
> 
> Anyway, if you were annoyed by the same things, this fic may be for you. If you weren’t annoyed but would still like a fix-it, this may also be for you. Either way, have fun!
> 
> Beta'ed by [Neery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neery), and very speedily, too. Thank you!

` **Space** `  
` **The Benatar** `  
` **Present Day** `

“Space is really awesome, isn’t it?”

Mantis is the only Guardian who reliably manages to sneak up on Thor. She does it without any intention to be sneaky. If he were still in charge of the Asgardian army, he’d make her a battlefield scout on the spot.

“It is awesome,” he agrees. He’s in Quill’s pilot chair on the _Benatar_. Space, or more precisely the fourth branch of Yggdrasil, flies by outside. “I find that nothing touches it. Formidable changes have taken place, but you wouldn’t be able to tell looking at space.”

“Are you sad about your people again?”

A battlefield scout, or an interrogator. Thor gives her a smile, shakes his head and makes matted strands bounce. “I’m not sad, Mantis. We won. We killed Thanos and brought the Vanished back. There’s nothing to be sad about anymore.”

Mantis blinks wide eyes at him, glances over to where Quill is sleeping in his bunk. He’s alone, with Gamora’s bunk left empty. “He is still sad,” she says. “He has still lost. And so have you.”

“I have.” Thor takes a sip from his bottle, swills the beer around in his mouth. Their fight against Thanos brought back the Vanished, the slaughtered fifty percent of the universe’s population. But it didn’t bring back the people lost before or after. It didn’t bring back the fifty percent of his people who lost their lives on the _Statesman_ at Thanos’ hands. It didn’t bring back Loki.

As he watches the stars, Thor thinks about grief. Like space, grief is vast and impossible to comprehend. He’s learned that actions born from grief can be weak, or strong, or one masquerading as the other.

Most importantly, though, he’s starting to think that a person grieving should not allow conjecture to hold them back. Grief, like space, must follow its path to the end.

\------

“What do you mean, you have to go back to Earth?”

“I mean that I have to go back to Earth. It’s the planet we just left, it’s called Earth.”

Thor hasn’t had a drink since last night. He misses it, but not as much as he thought he would.

Quill’s eyes narrow. “It’s a rhetorical fucking question, Thor. It translates to ‘have you lost your mind, we’re not going back to the planet we just left, it’ll cost us an unjustifiable amount of fuel just because you can’t make up your mind on where in the universe you’d like to be’.”

“I will reimburse you for the fuel.”

“What’s on Earth, Big Guy?”

Rabbit swivels his chair around. Thor inclines his head; it’s a fair question.

“Answers, I hope.”

“Oh, that’s specific.” Quill rolls his eyes. “Answers to what, how much fuel you can waste flying pointlessly back and forth?”

“Course is laid in.” Rabbit gives a thumbs-up over his shoulder. “You can get some answers, and I can get some more of that sweet, sweet crunchy peanut cream stuff they have on that planet. I thought my supply would last, but I wasn’t counting on Captain Quill here midnight-snacking half my stock.”

“I did not!”

“I’m pretty sure you did.” Thor raises an eyebrow as he passes Quill to sit next to Rabbit in the pilot seat. “I don’t sleep much. I saw you in the galley.”

Quill protests, but Thor’s been on the _Benatar_ long enough to know that Quill protesting is just part of the ship’s background noises. He settles down and watches the space between the Realms fly by as Rabbit takes them back to Midgard.

 

` **Earth** `  
` **South Vietnam** `  
` **Present Day** `

Bringing back half the world’s population in an instant is not quite as harmful as snapping them out of existence, but it will create some logistical challenges. Quickly cranking up food production by one hundred percent is turning out to be the biggest one. As always in situations like these, the world’s executive branches have turned to science for answers.

Earth may have lost the man who was able to invent time travel without even trying too hard, but they haven’t lost their resident expert in biological sciences. They gave Bruce a compound in the middle of South Vietnam, with greenhouses and labs and a directive to increase growth rate and speed of basic food crops.

He’s making some progress. Only yesterday, he sent out blueprints for farming facilities on Java that should prevent further food shortages in South-East Asia. He’ll tackle cold climate regions next. The compound in Stockholm sent a request for a second opinion; apparently the short vegetation periods are giving them trouble.

He’s going over greenhouse parameters with a fine-tooth comb when the intercom goes off. “Dr. Banner, visitor for you in room M103.”

“I don’t have any scheduled.” He says it, then frowns. “Or do I? I haven’t looked at my schedule. Do I have a schedule?”

“You don’t, Dr. Banner. You’re cleared of all meetings. This visitor you might want to see anyway.”

He puts down the pipet—specially made for him; the standard ones tend to break in his hands. “Who is it?”

“It’s one of your old team mates.”

\------

“I thought you’d gone into space.”

It’s Thor who’s sprawled in one of the conference chairs that surround the table in M103. His girth hasn’t shrunk, and he’s still wearing his hair in unkempt strands. He seems a lot more sober than Bruce has seen him in a while, though.

“I did,” he says. “I came back.”

“That’s great!” Bruce is happy to see him. Not as happy as he’d be if Thor let him get back to his greenhouse parameters. “What for?”

Thor levers himself to his feet. He’s a few heads shorter than Bruce; that’s just par for the course when you stand ten feet hunched over. Bruce still has the bias of a five-foot-eight human, though, so he’s not entirely unimpressed.

The god of thunder swaggers over, slaps a large hand on Bruce’s even larger arm, and smiles. “I need you to explain time to me.”

\------

When he relocated to the compound, Bruce brought along the small Quantum Realm manipulator that he built to send Steve on his mission to return the Stones. He had it stored in a secure lab and held every intention of eventually disassembling it. Things came up, the disassemblage got deprioritized. At this point, he’d almost forgotten he had it.

It’s not going to tell Thor much. It’s still the best Bruce has got when it comes to explaining time.

“It’s impossibly complex,” he says, rolls a tiny whiteboard marker between his thumb and forefinger. “I built it, and even I’m not entirely sure how it works.”

“How did you build it, then?”

Thor’s prowling around the machine like a tiger in a zoo. Bruce shrugs.

“Tony.” He does his best to ignore the flicker in Thor’s eyes at the name. “He had the specs uploaded to his remote server. Locked down, of course, but once Pepper pulled them, all I had to do was follow instructions.”

“So you built it, but you have no clue what it does.”

“I know what it does!” A twinge of the Hulk’s anger makes him grind his teeth. “Just because I’m not primarily a quantum physicist doesn’t mean I don’t understand the principles.”

“Okay.” There’s a smirk on Thor’s face. Bruce reminds himself that there’s too much delicate equipment in the room to let himself lose his temper. “So what does it do?”

“It uses a set of synchronized, arbitrarily distributed up-quarks to continuously parse the Quantum Realm’s topography.” Thor’s eyes glaze over. Bruce scoffs. “It makes a map. With a map, you can go wherever you want. _When_ ever you want.”

“How does it affect reality?”

“What do you mean?”

Thor huffs a breath. He stomps over and snatches the marker out of Bruce’s hand.

“I am not an Earth scientist,” he says, pulls the cap off with his teeth and spits it on the floor. “But I know space, and I know magic.” He draws a line on the lab’s whiteboard, puts a circle on each end. “Every child in Asgard knows—every child in Asgard _knew_ that the Bifrost manipulates space and time.” He taps the line with the tip of the marker. “This is the space between where you are and where you want to be. It is also the _time_ between where you are and where you want to be. It has a beginning and an end. If you want to bring them closer together, space and time must bend. It can be done, but only with great care, lest you overbend and put the end before the beginning.”

With a sweeping gesture, Thor draws an arrow from one circle to the other. The point of the arrow overshoots and lands in the white expanse beside the second circle. Thor draws a sad face next to it, puts two x’s instead of eyes. “Nothing can end before it begins. If the Bifrost is used like this, the universe is put in grave danger. This is what they taught the children in Asgard.”

He puts the marker down. Bruce wonders if he should find the cap to prevent it drying out when Thor heads across the room and stabs a finger at the Quantum Realm manipulator. “This machine puts the end before the beginning. It’s like the Bifrost, but it’s designed to do what generations of my people said must never be done. And yet, we used it, and are here, safe and sound. Explain to me how that’s possible.”

“I can’t.”

There are millions of people in South-East Asia, more in Africa and the Americas and Eurasia, who are counting on Dr. Bruce Banner to make sure they don’t run out of food. He’s confident he’ll be able to help. He saw a parameter on the sheet earlier that looked off to him, that might very well be the culprit. It took him less than thirty minutes to possibly save thousands. And yet, whenever he’s faced with a high-stakes scientific question from the team, it’s in a field where he has limited knowledge at best. “All I’ve got is a theory.”

“I will take a theory.”

Thor crosses his arms. Bruce picks up the marker with a sigh.

“Time is linear.” He draws another line on the board, right above Thor’s rudimentary model. “The bald wizard in the yellow robe told me that it’s not just linear, but singular, at least as long as all Infinity Stones are in their rightful place in the timeline.” He draws a little circle with six dots around the center of the line.

“But they are not. We took them out of time.”

“In the Time Heist, yes. We took them out, and we created offshoots.” From the six dots, Bruce draws more lines branching out from the central one. “These are aberrations, things that aren’t meant to be and that lie outside of the singular, linear flow of time. But we fixed it by returning the Stones.” He loops the branches around, brings them back to their origin. “We pruned the offshoots and returned spacetime to a singular entity. No parallel universes, no alternate timelines. Just—this.”

“Just reality as we have it now.” Thor sounds thoughtful. He comes over, scans the drawing on the whiteboard. He picks up the rag, slowly wipes the looping branches away. “Thank you, Bruce. I think I understand.”

That’s more than Bruce can say for himself. But it’s pretty academic at this point. In any case, he has some greenhouse parameters to get back to.

 

` **Space** `  
` **The Statesman** `  
` **2017 Earth Time** `

As far as spaceships go, the _Statesman_ is not bad. Loki’s more one for small and fast vessels—either that, or large and imposing, suitable for a king. The _Statesman_ is too bulky to be the former and too small to be the latter, but it is the ship that allowed him to act as the savior of the Asgardian race. That in itself makes him rather fond.

Maybe after all of this, he’ll get to keep her. Whichever Realm they settle in, maybe the _Statesman_ will be the ship that’ll allow him to go where he pleases, without Heimdall watching his every move. It’s not that he’s planning to betray anyone—for once, he isn’t. He just doesn’t like feeling like big brother’s watching him.

As much as he enjoys being a savior for once, the ship’s unbearably crowded. Asgardian refugees spill out into the hallways, play cards and dice and block intersections. Kids chase each other up and down, and Loki’s pretty sure that the supply closet on the fifth deck has become a hang-out spot for horny teenagers.

People are going to people, he supposes. But this is why he hasn’t shared with anyone the fact that the fourth wall panel on the lee observation deck slides back to reveal a cozy reading nook. He’s pretty sure it was constructed to be something other than a reading nook, but that’s what he’s been using it for—with the wall panel closed, of course.

He has to wait for almost an hour until the observation deck clears enough so he can slip in unnoticed. He slides the panel shut, exhales a breath of relief as sweet solitude surrounds him. Really, he’ll never understand people who enjoy crowds.

“Loki!”

Someone tackles him from behind. It’s a large someone, the momentum slamming him face-first into the wall. His arm’s trapped, bent awkwardly enough to make manifesting a dagger dangerous business. Silently, he curses his own naiveté. Of course there are still Asgardians who resent him snatching power. Stupid of him to think that him saving their life would bring them over to his side.

“You won’t—get away with this,” he gasps, tries to struggle. “Thor will have your head if you harm me.”

“It’s me, Loki.”

He’s being let go. The moment the arms around him are gone, Loki spins on his heel, makes his dagger appear as he goes for his attacker’s throat.

“Whoa!”

The man is tall, broad-shouldered and large-bellied, with a scraggly mess of matted hair and a coarse, braided beard. He’s wearing an odd-looking, red-and-white suit. Holds up his hands and steps back as far as he can in the confined space. 

It’s only when Loki meets his eyes that he realizes he’s looking at Thor. A run-down, dilapidated version of Thor, but undoubtedly his brother. At least as far as appearances go.

He grips his dagger more tightly.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Thor. Loki, I’m Thor. Put the dagger down.”

“You are not Thor.” He slides a step sideways, moves himself closer to the wall panel release. It’s very likely that people will see him opening it. The fact that he’ll lose his hiding place to this oafish copy of his brother only makes him madder. “I spoke to Thor earlier, he’s up on the bridge discussing settlement plans. Looked like he’d be a while.” He gives the impostor a pointed once-over. “Besides, if you’re trying to impersonate Thor, you overshot by something like sixty pounds.”

“Ah, yes. I don’t have this yet.” Not-Thor slaps his protruding belly with a jovial chuckle. He sounds like Thor, Loki will give him that. “I’m not your Thor.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m from the future.” Not-Thor spreads his hands. “Five—six years from now? Earth years. Something like that, I didn’t really keep track.”

There are several possibilities here. Perhaps this is Thor, driven mad by the boredom of being holed up on this ship and playing an absurd prank on him. Perhaps it’s an Asgardian with a bizarre sense of humor. Or perhaps it’s Hela, though Loki’s pretty sure that’s the unlikeliest option. Fire demons tend to be quite effective even against goddesses of death.

Last option, the man might be telling the truth. His brother does have the obnoxious habit of doing that sometimes.

“Prove it to me.”

The man spreads his hands. “I’m here, am I not? Nobody knows this hiding place of yours. You’ve done very well keeping it a secret. I certainly didn’t know about it.”

“You’re _here_. Clearly you know about it.”

“Yes, I meant—past me. Past me didn’t know. Present me knows. Or—I suppose it’s present me and future me. The guy on the bridge doesn’t know. I know. Because you showed me.”

“I didn’t show this to anyone.”

“No, but you will.” Something somber settles over the man’s expression, and he lowers his hands. “Put the knife down, Loki. I’m here because if you don’t listen to me, you’ll be dead in less than a day.”

The words are threatening, the situation is threatening. Loki should be reading this as a threat. He’s not. Before he can think about it, he’s lowered the knife, the dagger sliding back into the pocket reality where he keeps it. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The _Statesman_ will be attacked. _Sanctuary II_ is picking her up as we speak. She’ll be here soon, and she’ll blow you out of the sky.”

“ _Sanctuary II_? As in, Thanos’ ship?”

A shadow settles over Thor’s features. All of a sudden, Loki’s sure that he’s talking to his brother. Thor’s never been hard to read, but his openness makes him almost impossible to truthfully impersonate. Loki would know, he’s tried times enough.

“Thanos’ ship.” Thor spits the name out like a bad mouthful of ale. “He’s after the Tesseract. Which I know you have, by the way.”

“I don’t have it.” The denial is instant. The waver of surprise in his voice gives him away, though. He used to be better at this. “And even if I did,” he tries in the name of damage control, “perhaps I’m just trying to conserve some Asgardian culture—”

“We don’t have time.” Thor reaches into his pocket. Loki’s hand curls, ready to manifest the dagger if needed, but all Thor pulls out is a location tag.

“Make sure this is placed as closely to the center of the ship as possible.” Thor hands over the small, button-shaped gadget. “I’ll take you all somewhere safe, but I can’t take the _Statesman_ like this. She’s too big.”

Loki’s already reaching for the tag, but those words make him hesitate. “You’ll have me lose my ship?”

Thor meets his eyes. The hair may be a mess, and the beard is unspeakable, but the eyes are the same—a barely mischievous twinkle backed up by hard steel. “You will not lose your ship, brother. But even if you did, would you rather lose your life?”

“I suppose not.”

“Good. So can I count on you?”

The tag falls into his palm. He realizes it’s modified with an adaptation in the same red and white colors as Thor’s suit. “Of course you can count on me.” He smiles. “When’s that ever not been the case?”

 

` **Earth** `  
` **Washington, DC** `  
` **Present Day** `

These days, Clint spends every other week in DC.

Nobody will come after a hero of the Battle of Earth for vigilantism, so any crimes he committed in the past five years have been effectively forgiven. During the battle debrief, there was a certain expectation in Nick Fury’s eyes, though, a pointed reminder that Clint’s got a few things to make up for.

Clint decided to give up his organized crime intelligence and help authorities clean them up the legal way. The CIA’s only too happy to have an Avenger on their Black Ops team, and generously allowed him to work out a schedule that would let him split his time between hunting bad guys and playing catch with his kids.

To be honest, the work is a welcome outlet. Clint’s not a man for extensive self-reflection, but after Vormir, he realized he has some shit to work through. Best to do that away from home.

DC’s not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. The Mall’s a bit boring if you’re not a museum nerd, but it’s in walking distance from Chinatown. DC’s is not as sprawling as, say, San Francisco’s, but it’s got all the nooks and crannies you’d expect. Being able to order _fānqié chǎo dàn_ in passable Mandarin will get you a table in the restaurants without pictures in the menu, which is really all Clint wants.

He’s playing bubble shooter with one hand and shoveling eggs and tomatoes into his mouth with the other when there’s a tap on his shoulder.

Reflexes are called that for a reason; it’s not like you tend to think about them. Keeping a switchblade in his sleeve is just common sense. He trained for years to have this exact reaction to sudden attacks, but he’s still not impressed with himself when he ends up slamming Nat against the wall and holding a blade to her throat.

He doesn’t berate himself for it, though, either. He just drops the knife, fingers opening as he staggers a step back. And then another. He didn’t think knees actually went weak like this; he always figured it was a thing movies and books made up for effect. Fact is, though, he’s lucky there’s a chair nearby. Otherwise he’d’ve landed on his ass.

“Clint.” Nat’s wearing her suit. She looks the exact fucking same as she did on that hell of a planet where he lost her. “Hey, you okay?”

“Am I okay—am _I_ okay?” It’s a testament to his lack of composure that it only now crosses his mind that this might be an impostor. His switchblade’s out of reach, but he’s got some brass knuckles stored in the lining of his jacket. “The fuck you doing here? Are you Nat? As far as I know, you’re not Nat.”

\------

Turns out she is, in fact, Nat. There’s an upside to having been friends with someone for literal decades. The shared trivia gets so random and extensive that it’s unlikely for an impostor to know all of it.

They each have a bottle of Tsingtao in front of them now. Clint’s retrieved his switchblade, and Nat’s taken off her armored jacket. She’s got her elbows on the table, a pair of chopsticks in her hand that she’s using to steal pieces of scrambled egg off his plate.

“What about the red guy?”

“Who?”

“You remember. Floaty guy, fire-engine red ‘n ugly as sin. Wearing Ozzy Osbourne’s old bathrobe. He said the sacrifice would be permanent.”

“I wasn’t there, Clint. Thor got me from before we even left for the mission. But seems like the red guy was wrong.”

“You know, I’m fine losing to Bruce or Tony in the brains department—” His eyebrows pull together as Stark’s name slips out; he’s been trying to avoid it— “but I’m not cool with it when it’s Thor. How come he gets this and I don’t?”

“I’m not sure he gets it.” Nat settles back in her chair, fishes for her beer like an afterthought. “Even Bruce doesn’t really. But fact seems to be that even though Thor went back and got me from before I went to Vormir, I still went to Vormir with you.”

“What, like a parallel universe?”

Nat shakes her head. “Those don’t exist, not as long as the Stones are where they’re meant to be in the timeline.”

Clint picks up his own bottle, rubs his thumb over the edge of the label where condensation is making it curl. “Look, Nat, I’m thrilled to have you back. There’s not been a night since Vormir I haven’t dreamed about letting go of your hand, so. I’m the last guy who’s gonna argue with this. That said—” He narrows his eyes. “Are we sure we’re not breaking some cosmic fucking law?”

“No.” Nat shrugs, her eyes shifting off to the side. “I asked Thor the same thing, who sent me to Bruce, who said—” She pauses, and snorts. “He said that the only person who could tell us if we’re fucking it up is Tony, and the only way he could tell us is if we brought him back.”

“I see.” There’s a small heap of egg and tomato left on his plate. Clint picks up the chopsticks, pulls out a chili from the middle. “Are we bringing him back?”

“I don’t think there’s any stopping it.” Nat pulls up one corner of her mouth in a trademark smirk and reminds Clint of how much he missed her. “Thor’s on a roll.”

 

` **Earth** `  
` **The Avengers Compound** `  
` **The Night Before the Time Heist** `

“Everything’s gonna be fine.”

Tony mutters it as he switches the helmet camera off, echoes his own words like a mantra. They’re bullshit, of course. They’re about to fuck with spacetime on a level previously unheard of. Either it’ll work, or it’ll blow up in their faces, but either way, none of this is fine.

Fine would be building those solar panels with Morgan they were talking about putting up behind the house. It’d be arguing with Pepper whether to put squash or eggplant in the front yard. Shrinking yourself down to subatomic size so you can zoom around spacetime isn’t _fine_.

He’s as prepped as he’ll ever be. He just recorded a posthumous message, and he’s determined not to be a hero. They’re not in a 1960s western, after all. This is a heist movie, and there is no “I” in team. No heroic deaths need apply. When they’re done, they’ll bring the kid back safe and sound, and all the others who got snapped out of existence by the big purple ball sack. Who is dead and can’t do anything about it. It’ll all work out just fi—it’ll all work out just right.

Maybe after all of this is over, they’ll let him replace the Vanished memorials with solar panels. Big fucking solar farms reminding everyone that surviving together is just about using resources right. The universe has got enough to go around, after all.

He’s trying to figure out if there’s a way to make those solar farms multi-functional—big skating rink with solar-paneled half-pipes, maybe?—when there’s a knock on the door.

“Who’s there?”

His voice pitches higher, the way it does when he’s nervous. He’s got reason to be nervous. Nobody’s up anymore; they all went to bed hours ago. Told him to get some rest, too, but at this point they know he doesn’t sleep before missions. So either it’s a fellow insomniac, or the facility’s been compromised. He really hopes it’s the former.

The lab door opens. Thor steps through. Tony’s shoulders relax.

“Hey there. What’re you doing up?”

“I should ask you the same.” Thor smiles. There’s something off about him. There’s a lot off about him; it breaks Tony’s heart a little every time he looks at what Thor’s become. But it’s not just that. There’s something in his eyes, and something about the way he seems, well. Mostly sober. “Aren’t you about to do a Time Heist? You should be gathering your strength.”

“So should you. You’re doing the Time Heist, too, remember?”

“Yes, of course I am.” Thor comes over, holds out something in his palm. It’s one of the Quantum Realm suit casings. “Except I’m not. I’ve already done it.”

“You—” Oh, shit. Oh, _shit_. Tony takes a step back. “You’re from the future. Are you from the future? What happens? Do we fuck it up? We fuck it up. How badly?”

Thor laughs. “We do not, in fact, fuck it up. I need you to come with me, though.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“You must.”

“I don’t have to do a damn thing—”

“Sit down.” A large hand falls onto his shoulder. His knees buckle without much resistance, and he sits down hard in one of the lab chairs.

Thor grabs another chair to sprawl in. He holds up the suit casing. “This is your suit, the same you’ll wear tomorrow morning. You’ll still do it, no matter what happens today.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“It is how it works.” Thor smiles, wide and cheerful. He _is_ different from the Thor who’s presumably asleep in the other wing of the compound. The smile’s more sincere than anything Tony’s seen on Thor’s face for a while. “I have tested it extensively. Is that not how your science works? If all tests come out the same, I can call it proof.”

“Extensively?” Something heavy settles in Tony’s gut. “How extensively?”

Thor’s expression grows somber. “We win the Battle of Earth, Stark, but we suffer grave losses. We lose Natasha like we lost Gamora. Like we lost many of my people.”

“I—” Shit. He knew this would happen. Hand people a time traveling finger, and they’ll take the whole hand. “Look, Thor, I’m sorry, but people who are gone, they’re gone. The Vanished, that’s one thing, they were taken out of time by the Stones, but everyone else—”

“Gamora returns,” Thor interrupts him. “She travels to the future from her past, and she remains.”

Tony opens his mouth, closes it. It’s hard to decide what to ask first. “So—” He frowns. “So you’re telling me you brought a past version of Gamora into the future, and she stayed there?”

“Yes. And a past version of Natasha, and a past version of my people—”

“ _Jesus_!” He jumps to his feet, waves a hand as he crosses the room to pull up the modelling interface. “Are you _trying_ to break all of spacetime?”

The Moebius model he built is still stored on his remote server. He accesses the file. “Stretch the model across four dimensions,” he tells the AI. “Introduce ten arbitrary non-linear aberrations.”

“Computing.”

Considering the server in this compound is one of the beefiest Tony’s ever worked with, it takes a ridiculously long time for the program to start spitting out the render. It’s like watching a website build through an early nineties modem connection. One chunk after the other drops in, and Tony half-expects to hear the unhappy creak of an overtaxed hard drive.

Halfway there, it stops. If there’s one thing Tony hates, it’s systems freezing up, so he builds his own with as many failsafes as possible. His programs will auto-backup and shut down before they freeze. As far as Tony is concerned, freezing user interfaces are a sign of incompetent design.

This, however, is his system freezing up. The half-rendered model flickers. Chunks disappear just to reappear in random places until the Moebius band looks like a mathematician’s failed attempt at a Frankenstein joke. The AI’s spitting out garbled noises, and that’s what makes Tony reach for the kill switch. It’s like listening to a child having a seizure.

“Shit.” It echoes in the sudden darkness of the room. The overhead lights take a cue and come on to replace the console illuminations. Tony turns around. “You fucking see this? The _model_ can’t process what you’re talking about. What the hell have you done to the future?”

“Nothing.” Thor looks wholly unconcerned. He’s gotten up as well, has his arms crossed and his forearms resting on his beer gut. He waves a hand at the dead console. “None of this has happened in the future. Or to the future. Your model is wrong, Stark.”

“My model’s—my model’s not _wrong_.”

The thing is, it might be. If Future Thor has done what he says he’s done, and if it hasn’t cracked his reality open like a dropped egg, then the model’s almost definitely wrong.

Only one way to find out.

“Gimme that.” Thor’s still holding the suit casing. Tony stalks over, snatches it from his hand and slaps it in place in the center of his chest. “I’ll come with you, under the condition that if your reality shatters because of this, you’re not holding me responsible.”

“Deal.” Thor grins, pulls something from his pocket that looks suspiciously like a quantum remote control. “Hold your breath, and try not to vomit.”

 

` **Earth** `  
` **South Vietnam** `  
` **Present Day** `

Bruce’s lab is on the same floor as the lab with the Quantum Realm manipulator. Hearing the manipulator’s whooshing sound reverberate through the walls has become synonymous to him with regaining lost friends.

It knocked him off his feet when it was Nat who stumbled off the platform. Loki he felt more ambiguous about, but there was a surprising amount of good feelings mixed in with his caution. The way Thor’s spirits lifted after regaining his brother and the lost Asgardians definitely made it worth it.

Vision came back followed directly by Shuri, who’d accompanied Thor to perform the Mind Stone extraction in peace without Thanos’ army trying to bomb them into oblivion. Moving the Stone through time would’ve been too risky, but Vision seems to be functioning quite well without it. He and Wanda have gone back to Edinburgh. From what Bruce hears, he’s developing an interest in whiskey brewing.

This time, he’s in the room when the vortex opens. The temporal remote he built allows Thor to trigger his own return, but it tends to cause a lag between departure and arrival. This time around, it’s been over twenty minutes. Bruce tried to keep his mind focused on the wheat genome sequence he’s got running in the other lab, but he found it near impossible. That’s why he’s here now, pacing single steps that carry him all the way across the room and back.

Thor shows up first. He shoots up to his full height and gets off the platform the moment he’s found his feet. Bruce supposes he’s a pro at this by now. The manipulator hums as the vortex processes another arrival. For a split-second, Bruce is convinced that the gadget will malfunction, close the vortex too early and crush the traveler in the maelstroms of spacetime. While he’s still worrying, a figure in a red and white quantum suit appears.

“Shit!” The figure stumbles, moves one foot too far and steps over the platform edge. Bruce grabs him, ends up scooping him up in his arms. When the helmet retracts, he finds himself hug-lifting a flustered Tony Stark.

“Jesus, that’s rough!” Tony splutters. “I didn’t build it like that, I put in dampeners.”

“Sorry.” He says it without paying attention to what’s coming out of his mouth. He can’t quite process what he’s feeling. There’s a Hulkian urge to scream a wail of joy at the ceiling. “I couldn’t figure out how to downscale them, so I had to take them out.”

“Right.” Tony seems to be catching on to his surroundings. He meets Bruce’s eyes, squirms. “Mind putting me down?”

Bruce settles him down on his feet with care. Tony steps back, eyes flitting around the room. He looks like he’s trying to figure out where he is.

“This is a new facility.” Bruce exchanges a glance with Thor, who’s standing off to the side with a big smile on his face. _How much does he know?_

Thor shrugs and waves a hand, which is entirely unhelpful.

“They set me up with a bunch of greenhouses and a biochem lab to increase food crops production,” Bruce explains.

“Right.” Tony nods. His tongue comes out, wets his lips. “Makes sense. What’s that?” He points at the manipulator. “What happened to the one at the Avengers compound?”

“The compound—it sort of got destroyed.”

“Not just sort of.” Thor ambles over to a chair and gets comfortable. “It’s been completely leveled. Bombed to hell by Thanos.”

“By—what? By Thanos?” Tony’s eyes widen. It’s all Bruce can do to keep from snatching him up in another hug. He’s missed this man. “Where the hell did he come from? He’s _dead_.”

“He came to the future from 2014. And he brought his army.” Thor twirls his beard between his fingers. “You killed him using the Infinity Stones. It was a most honorable act.”

“I killed him with the Stones?” Tony points at his chest for emphasis, looks from Thor to Bruce. “I can’t have done that. It would’ve killed me.”

The silence that follows is heavy enough to render further explanation unnecessary. Tony sucks in a breath and takes a stumbling step back. “Shit.”

The color drains from his cheeks. Bruce shuffles a concerned step closer.

“ _Shit_ ,” Tony says again. “This is how I die, isn’t it? I’m dead. In this future, I’m fucking dead.”

Bruce is still trying to find words when Thor spreads his hands and laughs. “Not anymore! I, Thor, Son of Odin, made sure that your daughter will not grow up without a father. You’re welcome, Tony Stark.”

\------

The Army flies a New York-bound passenger plane out of Ho Chi Minh City four hours later. Being Avengers, they get the red carpet treatment when they ask for a ride. Tony’s got his suit, of course, and it’s all he can do not to put it on and fly by himself, but Thor insists on coming along.

It’s only when the captain greets him with a gasp that Tony realizes he’s officially a dead man who can’t be walking around showing his face. They bribe the captain into keeping his mouth shut, and Tony borrows a hoodie off of Thor to stay at least somewhat incognito.

Bruce ends up staying behind. For one thing, he doesn’t easily fit on planes, and for another, he’s got crops to grow. The labs in the Vietnam compound, useless when it comes to running quantum analyses on the balance of spacetime, are where he needs to be to do the actually heroic thing of fiddling with carbon elements until all the people who suddenly showed back up won’t have to starve to death.

Tony hopes they’ll at least give him a Nobel Prize, or something.

He sits on the plane, hood up and sweating like a pig, and kneads his hands in his lap. He hates long flights, especially on planes that don’t belong to him. New York is where he needs to be, though. Two hundred miles north of the city, there’s a small country home with a garage containing the only lab that’s equipped to run the tests he needs to run.

Pepper’s there, too. Pepper and Morgan. Trying to decide what to do about that is making him feel worse than the stale smell of beer-sweat from Thor’s hoodie.

“You buried me.” It’s only half a question. He’s asked it before. “You had a proper funeral?”

“Yes.” Thor has one of those little peanut packs, fumbles a large finger into a corner to chase down a nut. “A lot of people showed up. They were all dressed in black. It was very moving.”

“Was it?” Tony throws Thor a glance. “Did—I mean. I assume—were there people? I mean, who was there?”

“Who attended your funeral?” Thor shrugs. “I didn’t know most of them. The Avengers were all there, of course. The small one cried a lot.”

Tony tightens his fists. “Morgan?”

Thor shakes his head. “The one who wears the spider costume.”

“Right.” Tony tucks his hands under his armpits and stares out the window. Thinks of Pepper and Morgan and Peter, and about putting them through even more pain. “I can’t meet them. Not if I have to go back. I can’t give them false hope.”

“You do not have to go back, Stark. You’re here, and the cosmos is fine. I don’t understand what you’re concerned about.”

“Oh, nothing.” Tony narrows his eyes as he glares at the perpetually setting sun they’re flying towards. “Just the fabric of the universe, that’s all. Don’t bother your head about it.”

 

` **Earth** `  
` **Upstate New York** `  
` **Present Day** `

He ends up sneaking into the house after sundown.

Thor’s not with him. After they landed, he borrowed a motorcycle and said something about returning to New Asgard before Loki attempts to take it over. He left before Tony could get into an argument with him about the wisdom of bringing Loki back, of all people.

Tony built all alarms and defense mechanisms in the house himself, so circumventing them is easy enough. He knows the inhabitants’ routines and makes his entry around one in the morning, when he knows both Pepper and Morgan will be asleep.

Going behind their backs makes him feel worse than he does already. But he can’t face them until he knows what his presence here is doing to the universe. False hope is the worst kind there is. So it’s in and out. Run the tests, do the math. Figure out what’s breaking, figure out how to fix it. Wrap it up by five, before Morgan wakes up for her early-morning cuddle session.

Does she still do that? Pepper’s not much of a cuddler. Not that she won’t hug her daughter, but she gives off less of a cuddly vibe than he’s been told (by Morgan, of course) that he does.

Maybe if he’s gone, Morgan doesn’t come cuddle anymore. The thought makes his chest hurt.

He’s barely powered up the systems when all his plans of staying hidden are ruined. There’s a creaking near the door, a shuffling step, and a voice.

“I don’t know why you’re sneaking into your own house like a thief in the night, but it’s really good to see you, Tony.”

It’s not Pepper. It’s definitely not Morgan. It’s a male voice, and an _old_ voice.

“Shit.” He spins around. His eyes take time to adjust to the semi-dark. “Who’s there?”

More shuffling steps. That’s definitely slippers sliding over the concrete floor. This house is many things, but it’s not a slippers kind of home.

When the man steps into the light, Tony expects to recognize him. The guy knew his name, after all. He does look eerily familiar—tall with a set of bright blue eyes, pretty broad shoulders for a guy this old. A familiar quirk to his lips. But Tony can’t place him.

“What are you doing in my house?”

“Pepper offered me the ground floor guest room. At my age, stairs aren’t the best idea anymore.”

“Pepper—” Is this an uncle of hers? He knows her father. He's attended several Potts reunions, and her family was at the wedding. “Who the hell are you?”

The man smiles, holds out a hand. All of a sudden, Tony has the most absurd gut feeling of who it is he’s facing. It’s too bizarre to even contemplate, except then he gets confirmation.

“Steve Rogers. We used to work together, though it’s been a while. For me, anyway.”

The hand just hovers between them. It’s an old man’s hand, with swollen joints and the skin across the back covered in wrinkles. There’s even a slight tremor.

The idea of shaking it doesn’t even cross Tony’s mind. “Did the serum have a bad reaction with time travel?” That’s a terrible theory. He can’t even begin to explain why one would react to the other. But it’s time travel. Anything’s possible.

Cap shakes his head, slips his hands into his pockets. “I went back in time to put the Stones back. When I’d returned the last one, I decided I’d rather stay than go back.”

Tony waits for more, but that seems to be it. He widens his eyes. “That’s wildly detailed. Thanks for that, I know exactly what happened now.”

Cap laughs, glances down at the floor like he’s trying to collect himself. “I had to bring the Tesseract back to S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters in 1970.”

“That’s not where we get the Tesseract. We get the Tesseract from New York.”

“We try,” Cap nods. “But we fail.”

“We fail.” Tony crosses his arms. “You mean I fail. Me and—tiny man, Antman, we’re on Team Tesseract. And we blow it?”

Cap takes a step closer. There’s that old, shaky hand again, reaching out for Tony’s arm. He’d step back to evade it, but he’s perched right against a console. The hand settles on his forearm—warm, and lighter than it should be.

“You’re many things, Tony. A failure’s not one of them.”

He stares at the hand, raises his eyes to look at Cap’s face. His old, wrinkled face. If he went back to 1970 and stayed there, he’d be what now, ninety? Older, maybe. Shit. “Why’d you even put them back?” His eyes narrow. “You’re bringing people back willy-nilly, clearly you don’t give a fuck about temporal continuity. Why not just keep the Stones?”

Steve sighs, pulls his hand back. “The Ancient One. Dr. Strange’s mentor. She said that the universe depended on keeping all Infinity Stones in their correct place in time. So we could take them, but we had to put them back.”

“She sounds like a smart cookie.”

Steve smiles, and now Tony does recognize him even past all the wrinkles. Of all the universal forces, time is definitely the biggest mindfuck.

Before he can stop himself, a question slips out that he’s been burning to ask for the past ten hours. “How exactly do I die?”

The lighting in the room is pretty bad; he didn’t bother turning on the overhead lights. There’s still no mistaking the shadow that falls over Steve’s face.

“Saving everyone,” he says in his gravest Captain America voice.

Tony narrows his eyes, shoves his hands more tightly into his armpits. “Yes, all right. Thor said as much. I’m talking specifics. What happens? And, most importantly, _when_?”

There’s a drawn-out silence. Watching Cap’s face, Tony feels like he can see the man’s thoughts spelled out. That’s gotta be old age; he never used to be able to do that with Cap.

Eventually, Steve seems to decide to spill the beans. Good for him. It’s not like Tony would’ve let this go.

“We get the Stones and we manage to return the Vanished. Thanos follows us to the future, so we face him in battle. Everyone—everyone is there, Tony. We truly stood together.”

“Right.” Tony tries to picture it. He can’t quite make it; his mind keeps getting sidetracked wondering if the kid was there. Sam Wilson, whom he didn’t think he’d miss as much as he ended up missing him. Wanda, maybe? Not Vision. Vision just got plain old killed, not Vanished. “So then what happens?”

“Thanos gets the Stones.”

The words make his adrenaline spike. Steve looks like he can tell, softens his voice till he sounds like a goddamn meditation tape instructor. “You take them from him before he can do anything. You—honestly, I have no idea what you did. You somehow matched them with your suit glove. You used them to snap Thanos and his army out of existence.”

Tony’s chest is so tight that drawing a breath takes up half of his attention. He’s got enough left to figure out what Steve is saying. He must’ve had the specs for a replica of the Infinity Glove stored in his nanites modulator. He must’ve uploaded that before the battle, well aware he might use it as a last resort.

He made a glove, and he did what Thanos did, snapped thousands out of existence in an instant. He knows it’s not the same, but then, maybe it is a little. It’s enough to make him nauseous.

“Hey.” Steve sounds concerned, shuffles one old-man-slipper-step closer. “Tony, are you okay?”

“Fine.” He knows Steve; Steve’s gonna try and touch him again. He turns his back to him, puts the heels of his hands against the console. “I’m fine. I should run these calculations now.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. Two can play that game, though, and Tony doesn’t even have to wait him out for that long.

“All right.” More shuffling as Cap retreats towards the house. “Don’t leave without saying goodbye, Tony.”

 _You’d just come get me again._ He doesn’t say it out loud, but the thought more than anything strengthens his building conviction that inventing time travel may have been the worst thing he’s done in his lifetime.

\------

The older your body gets, the less it seems to require sleep. For Steve, it’s gotten to a point where he doesn’t always know what to do with his twenty waking hours per day.

Recently, he’s been reading John le Carré novels. There are enough to keep him entertained for a while, and he enjoys seeing which historical bits le Carré gets right, and what’s completely off the mark. Smugness may be a base motivation for reading novels, but Steve just has a lot of time on his hands.

Right now, it’s difficult to focus on spies and intrigues, though. Tony made it clear he wasn’t interested in company, but that doesn’t mean Steve can stop thinking about the way he left him—shoulders taut and hunched up, his head tucked down in between. Maybe telling him how he died wasn’t the right thing to do. It’s Tony, though; he would’ve found out eventually. Better to learn it from someone who’ll break it gently.

 _You sure that’s you?_ He took a long time to admit that he’s not always the best at seeing the person instead of the bigger picture. These days, he’s quite aware. In the bigger picture, Tony’s sacrifice was something to honor and celebrate. On a personal level, not so much.

Not at all, really.

He stays at the kitchen table until the first early birds start chirping outside. Eyelids heavy, he’s contemplating the pros and cons of a couple hours of shut-eye when the slam of a door startles him upright.

“You absolute and total shit.”

Tony bursts into the kitchen. It’s the first room you enter coming in through the garage, which is why Steve chose it as a place to keep guard.

He blinks the drowsiness out of his eyes. “Excuse me?”

“Like hell.” Tony stalks over to the counter. “You’re lying to me. _Again_.”

Steve closes his book, carefully marks his place with a bookmark. He hopes Pepper and Morgan will give them time to finish this before they come downstairs to see what’s causing the ruckus. “What am I lying about, Tony?”

“You didn’t just stay in 1970. I mean, maybe you did, you’re certainly old enough. But it’s impossible for you to have done that and also be here.”

Steve stares at his hands. He supposes he should’ve expected Tony to figure it out sooner rather than later. Still, the story he told isn’t technically a lie. “I was advised to just claim that I stayed. ‘Save everyone a major headache’, I believe is how you put it.”

“How _I_ put it?” Tony’s voice pitches higher and cracks. “What the hell are you talking about?”

A sigh escapes him. He rubs a thumb over an eyebrow, gets up and goes for the coffee machine. “Would you like a cup?”

“I would like some answers.”

He makes them a cup each, anyway. The noise of the beans being ground is very loud in the early morning silence.

“I ended up in 1970 with enough particles for one more jump.” He spoons sugar into his own coffee, leaves Tony’s black, the way he knows he likes it. “Except when I went down into the vault to put the Tesseract back, I found that no particles were missing.”

Tony takes the mug, which Steve will count as a win. He retreats back to the table. “The ones we took on our first trip to S.H.I.E.L.D. were still there. So I took them again.”

A muscle in Tony’s jaw pops, but otherwise he makes no move. “What for?”

“Bucky.” Steve shrugs. Maybe him only seeing the bigger picture is nonsense, after all. Traveling through time and space to rescue a friend is not exactly the bigger picture. “I went back to get him before Hydra could turn him into the Winter Soldier.”

“You _idiot_.”

His lips thin out. He looks up. “I saved your parents, too.”

Tony’s eyes widen. He makes an aborted gesture, stops himself long enough to put the coffee down. Steve immediately regrets putting it so bluntly, but Tony doesn’t give him a chance to soften the blow.

“Jesus.” Tony’s breathing hard. “You just went and fixed it all, huh? All those nasty bits the universe got wrong, Captain Rogers to the rescue. You kill Hitler, too?”

There’s a moment of silence. Steve raises his mug, takes a sip, and is careful not to break it.

“Oh my god.” Tony pushes off the counter. He starts pacing, fists curling and uncurling. His fingers spread like he’s about to throw them up and pray. After two and a half kitchen lengths, he swivels around. “So you went back in time, and you just—changed everything. Jesus.” He takes a few breaths, gets himself back under control.

“I redid the model.” He clears his throat. “I was wrong. About the effects, about what’d happen if we went back. I thought we’d end up creating alternate realities, but turns out there’s no such thing. Reality requires Infinity Stones, and there’s only one set of those across spacetime. What we created—what you created—they’re paradoxical offshoots.”

“That’s what the other you said. Or, well.” Steve shrugs. “I think that’s what you said. You called it a paradox.”

“The other me. Jesus.” Tony slumps back against the counter. “How many versions of me have you met?”

“Just the one. You weren’t much different.” A little less neurotic, maybe, but Steve supposes not losing your parents to an assassination would have that effect.

“I hate this.” Tony scrubs his hands over his face. “I hate this so much. Nobody is allowed to time travel ever again.”

“Does that mean you’ll stay?”

Tony’s eyes flicker. He takes a moment to reply. “I think I have to.” He pauses, purses his lips in thought. “You know how you went back to S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Pym Particles we took were still there?”

Steve nods. “I thought that was odd.”

“It’s not—it’s not. It’s because by taking them, we created a paradox. You can’t go back to the paradox, though. All you can do is go back and create another paradox.”

Steve tries to wrap his head around that. He thought he knew time travel pretty well at this point. Turns out he still barely understands it. “So you’re saying that if you tried to go back, you’d end up meeting—yourself? There are now two of you?”

“There’s apparently like a dozen of me!” Tony throws up his hands. “Thanks, Cap. I’ll start a soccer team, or something.”

That makes him smile. To his surprise, Tony echoes it after a moment. He picks up his coffee, comes over to sit next to him at the table.

“I assume, and stop me if this is not what happened—but I assume that Other Me sent you back here to close the paradox.”

“You said—” Steve tries to remember. “You said that I was the trigger, and that’s why I had to go back. Like removing a plaster mold from a sculpture. I’d formed the—” He waves a hand. “The paradox. But I wasn’t part of it.”

“Right.” There’s something soft in Tony’s eyes. Steve does his best to ignore it. “Removing the plaster mold closes the paradox. It makes it self-contained.”

“And that makes it fine?”

“Well, closed paradoxes are better than open ones.” Tony rubs a finger over the bridge of his nose. “But no, they’re not fine. They take a toll on the Stones.”

Steve thinks back to the vault under the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, of the particles that kept replenishing themselves. Something twists in his stomach. “What kind of a toll?”

“It’s like a computer. You run too many tasks at the same time, your system’s gonna zoink out on you.”

“I don’t know why you think this version of me understands computer metaphors any better than any other version of me.”

Tony rolls his eyes. Before he can say anything, Steve holds up his hand. “I think I get it. It’s like—covering a stretch of front line with half the troops you’d need. The thinner you spread the troops, the more likely it is that your line will be penetrated.”

“Sure.” Tony shrugs. “If that works for you. Point is—”

“Point is that the Stones are under strain.” On some level, Steve knew that going back again and again was a bad idea. For the longest time, though, he didn’t have Tony there to explain why.

He looks down at his hands. “How are they holding up?”

“They’re holding.” Tony turns his mug in his fingers. “They’re—incredible. The amount of data they process—anyway. They’re holding.” He puts the coffee down. “Time travel’s going to have to go to the bottom of the lake, though.”

Steve nods. “I think we’ve gotten everything from it that we could ask for.”

Their eyes meet. Tony’s are clear, less panicked than when he came in from the garage. Maybe Steve’s imagining it, but he feels like there’s a silent agreement not to feel guilty for what they took.

To be honest, he thinks it’s only fair. The universe owed them a few paradoxes. While Steve’s still contemplating that, Tony’s already two steps ahead. He pulls his mouth into a smirk that’s no less than mischievous. “There is actually one more thing.”

 

` **Earth** `  
` **Upstate New York** `  
` **Ten Days Later** `

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but Bucky’s going to have to disagree. He didn’t start goat farming till well past his nineties, but he thinks he’s gotten pretty good at it.

The goats are out to pasture right now, leaving him to muck the stables and prepare everything for the round of shearing that’s to start tomorrow. It feels late in the year, but that’s just because farming goats in Upstate New York is different than farming them in the equatorial heat of East Africa.

T’Challa and the Wakandans would’ve been happy to have him back. Bucky considered it. He’s not willing to examine too closely the reasons that drove him to choose New York instead, a patch of farmland no more than sixty miles from the Stark-Potts residence. He tells himself it’s because Sam’s not far away. Sam’s in Toronto, helping out with food shipments to badly accessible areas in North Canada and the Artic. Bucky sends most of his farm produce his way, just a tiny drop in the large sea of supplies needed to keep everyone fed and alive.

It’s definitely not because Steve’s staying with Pepper and Morgan. Bucky hasn’t really spoken to Steve since the day Steve left to take the Stones back in time. He’s got nothing to say to him, and Steve seems to feel the same, considering he hasn’t stopped by.

That’s okay. Steve made his choices, and now Bucky’s made his. Some people get a lifetime with the love of their life, and some people get goats. It all shakes out in the end.

He’s hauling a wheelbarrow full of muck towards the dung hill when he spots a figure climbing up the incline that the farm sits on. There’s something in the gait that makes him put the handles down, makes him shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. He doesn’t really get visitors outside of deliveries and pick-ups. This guy seems to be neither.

“Who’s there?”

The guy doesn’t answer, just keeps coming closer. Soon there’s no doubt about who it is he’s looking at. He clenches his fist, the static buzz in his arm prickling against his nerve endings.

“Stop right there.”

The man stops. He’s wearing jeans and a flannel, fabric stretching over broad shoulders and falling more loosely around a narrow waist. Blond hair, blue eyes; it’s Steve. It’s fucking Captain America, not looking a day over forty.

Bucky clenches his jaw. “What new shit is this?”

Suddenly-Young-Again Steve huffs a laugh. “Not quite the welcome I was expecting.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” He actually is. He can’t help it. Even if this is some impostor taking advantage of Bucky by giving him exactly what he didn’t dare hope for, he still doesn’t want to put a disappointed look on that face.

Steve tilts his head. “Tony didn’t tell you I was coming?”

Something cold creeps down Bucky’s spine. “Which Tony?”

“Tony Stark.”

“That some kind of joke?”

Steve’s shoulders slump. He looks at him in a way too familiar to not convince Bucky that he’s the real deal. “For Christ’s sake. Do you ever talk to anyone?”

“Question is, do they talk to me.” He pauses, hesitates. Jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “You’d better come in, huh?”

\------

Apparently Tony’s been back for about a week. Something to do with Thor; Steve’s not clear on the details. Bucky waves him off. He’s glad to hear Tony’s back, but his and Stark’s relationship has never been any better than fraught. He’s much more interested in Steve’s sudden rejuvenation.

It’s also got to do with Tony. And with time travel. And with paradoxes. Bucky stops Steve halfway through his explanation.

“I’m only getting every other word of what you’re saying. Just—stick to the basics, okay? You’re somehow young again. Because Tony did a thing with Banner’s time travel machine?”

“Yeah. The one that changes people’s age. Turns out that work wasn’t wasted, after all.”

“You know,” Bucky says, rests his elbows on the small, two-people kitchen table they’ve sat down at, “for someone who insists he just wants to live out a normal lifespan, you’re incredibly bad at it. This has added how many years? Thirty?”

“More like forty-five. I’m now over a hundred and fifty years old.”

“Jesus.” He lets out a small laugh. “Guess that means I’m officially the baby now.” His amusement is superficial. He’s searching Steve’s face, trying to spot a hint of what Steve’s feeling. “Why did you agree to it? You seemed to be looking forward to, well. Going the natural way.”

He can’t quite keep the bitterness out of his voice. Steve shifts his eyes to the side. “Apparently, the fact that I grew old outside of my own time was still an aberration putting strain on the Stones. I don’t really get it, but Tony said this is easier on the universe.”

“Right.” Bucky leans back, crosses his arms. “So you did it for the good of the universe. Figures.”

“Bucky—”

“Steve, don’t.” He shakes his head. “You took something for yourself for once. It’s fine. You’re allowed. I’m not mad at you.”

“I left you.”

Bucky purses his lips, doesn’t trust himself to answer right away. Steve left, but really, who wouldn’t have? The last thing he wants is Steve feeling guilty. “I got Sam, right?”

“Yeah.” Steve looks around the room. It’s a typical farmhouse kitchen—big stove and long, blank countertops. Steve waves a hand at all the empty space. “He’s not here, though.”

“Neither are you. You live with the Starks, remember?” Bucky sees no reason why that would change.

“They generously offered me their guest room,” Steve nods. “But—now that Tony’s back, I’m not sure I want to keep intruding.”

“Is that what you’re doing? Intruding?”

Steve’s eyes narrow. “Tony and Pepper have a, hm, volatile relationship. Especially now. Pepper’s got stuff to work through. So does Tony. They tend to do that quite loudly.”

“So they’re having screaming matches when you’re trying to sleep.”

Steve weighs his head. “Yes. And—other things.”

Bucky’s lips twitch. “Other things?”

“Oh, come on.” Steve gives him a glare. “My bedroom’s right underneath theirs, if you have to know.”

Bucky can’t help a chortle. “ _Oh_. I see. So you’re here to ask for asylum, is that it?”

“I’m here to see a friend.”

The words make Bucky’s throat dry up. Fuck Steve Rogers being able to say things like that and make them sound like they come from the bottom of his heart. What’s worse, they probably do.

He swallows and concedes with a nod. “All right. But you’re _also_ here to ask for asylum.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then.” Bucky gets up. He holds out his good hand for Steve to take. “Captain Rogers, would you like me to show you how to farm goats?”


End file.
